Global Soil Doctors Programme

The Soil Doctors programme is developed under the umbrella of the GSP as part of the implementation plan for Pillar 2 on encouraging investment, technical cooperation, policy, education, awareness, and extension in support of the soil resource. By promoting the establishment of a farmer-to-farmer training system, the Soil Doctors Global Programme aims to build the capacity of smallholder farmers on the practice of sustainable soil management and, by doing so, support governmental agencies and organizations working on agricultural extension at the field level (promoting broader impact and a reduction of costs).

The programme also aims to educate farmers on soil science principles for practices of sustainable soil management and aims to achieve this by providing them with a set of tools composed of some educational materials and a soil testing methods (STM) manual for preliminary soil analysis.

The success of the programme strongly relies on the collaboration of different partners including governmental agencies, extension services, soil science societies and non-governmental agencies (NGOs) with the GSP because of the need to distribute the educational materials and the eventual material needed to assess soil conditions, and to train smallholder farmers on the use of these tools . >>>